Tootfinder

Judge finds Trump unlawfully fired 17 agency IGs, but won’t reinstate them
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2025/09/trump-unlawfully-fired-17-agency-igs-judge-finds-but-wont-reinstate-them/

"Water firms in England could face harsher sewage fines under new Environment Agency powers"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Water

UK's National Crime Agency says it's arrested a man in connection with a cyberattack that has caused days of disruption at Heathrow and other European airports (Imran Rahman-Jones/BBC)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62ldxyj431o

Man arrested in connection with cyber-attack on airports
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said a man in his forties was arrested in West Sussex.

Ministers tell Environment Agency to wave planning applications through | Environment Agency | The Guardian #UKPol

If ice takes you, and doesn’t kill you themselves, they’ll let anyone else who wants to kill you do it.
ice is not a law enforcement agency, not in any functional sense.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-facility-shooting-dallas-immig…

2 detainees killed and 1 critically injured in Dallas ICE shooting, officials say
Federal authorities say a shooter with a rifle opened fire from a roof onto a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement location in Dallas, killing two detainees and wounding another before taking his own life. The attack happened on Wednesday morning. The FBI said at a morning news conference that ammunition found at the scene contained anti-ICE messaging. The agency is investigating the shooting as “an act of targeted violence.” Authorities say no ICE agents were injured and the detainee w…

The European Space Agency OPS-SAT satellite can run DOOM
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-a-programmer-got-doom-to-run-on-a-space-satellite-and-what-happened-next

How a programmer got Doom to run on a space satellite and what happened next
The first-person shooter is famous for being ported to almost every computer on the planet. Now, we know it can run off the Earth as well.

Ransomware gang known for government attacks claims Maryland transit incident
https://therecord.media/maryland-transit-administration-data-breach-claimed-ransomware-gang

Ransomware gang known for government attacks claims Maryland transit incident
Maryland's statewide transit agency confirmed that a previously disclosed cyberattack exposed an unknown amount of data. A highly active cybercrime gang reportedly claimed the incident.

"Outrage as #Ireland picks ex-Meta lobbyist as new data protection chief
Niamh #Sweeney was announced in September as the pick for third commissioner for Ireland's already highly-controversial Data Protection Commission (DPC), rounding out its three-person leadership team.
Howev…

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians | Israel | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-blocks-israels-use-of-its-technology-in-mass-s…

Cyberattack on Russia’s food safety agency reportedly disrupts product shipments https://therecord.media/russia-food-safety-agency-rosselkhoznadzor-ddos-attack

Democracy After Disaster
Natural disasters rip away our collective sense of control, so it's critical that the road of recovery is paved with community voice and agency...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/democracy-after-…

Designing Usable Controls for Customizable Social Media Feeds
Frederick Choi, Eshwar Chandrasekharan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19615 https://arxiv.org/pdf…

Designing Usable Controls for Customizable Social Media Feeds
Personalized recommendation algorithms deliver content to the user on most major social media platforms. While these algorithms are crucial for helping users find relevant content, users lack meaningful control over them. This reduces users' sense of agency and their ability to adapt social media feeds to their own needs and values. Efforts have been made to give users more control over their feeds, but usability remains a major barrier to adoption. Drawing upon prior work in designing teachabl…

Pentagon Fires the Defense Intelligence Agency Chief (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/us/politics/defense-intelligence-agency-chief-fired.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250822/p113#a250822p113

I feel this so deeply in my bones.
Working in an agency full of creatives this very much speaks to me.
https://mastodon.social/@anon_opin/115253241854400858

Canada's anti-money laundering agency fines crypto exchange KuCoin ~$14M for failing to report large and suspicious transactions; KuCoin appeals the decision (Nivedita Balu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/c

Hegseth fires head of Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse

The firing follows a June preliminary assessment from the DIA
— the Pentagon’s main intelligence wing
— of the Iran military strikes,
which prompted vicious backlash from the Trump administration.

Hegseth fires head of Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the latest national security senior officer to be purged.

💸 Agency for college athlete payment deals agrees to loosen third-party restrictions
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/jul/31/agency-for-college-athlete-payment-deals-agrees-to-loosen-third-party-restrictio…

Drone incidents reported in Moscow and St. Petersburg, dozens of flights disrupted: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/23/drone-incidents-reported-in-moscow.html

EU agency ENISA confirms cyberattack caused airport disruptions
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/eu-agency-says-third-party-ransomware-behind-airport-disruptions-2025-09-22/

The STAR-XAI Protocol: An Interactive Framework for Inducing Second-Order Agency in AI Agents
Antoni Guasch, Maria Isabel Valdez
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17978 https://…

The STAR-XAI Protocol: An Interactive Framework for Inducing Second-Order Agency in AI Agents
Current Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) exhibit significant limitations in reliability and transparency, often showing a collapse in reasoning capabilities when faced with high-complexity, long-horizon tasks. This "illusion of thinking" is frequently an artifact of non-agentic, black-box evaluation paradigms that fail to cultivate robust problem-solving processes. In response, we introduce The STAR-XAI Protocol (Socratic, Transparent, Agentic, Reasoning - for eXplainable Artificial Intelligence),…

Trey Hendrickson contract: Bengals, star DE agree to major raise in final year of deal after lengthy standoff

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/trey-he

'Devastating': Judge rules Trump's anti-discrimination agency engaged in discrimination - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-administration-2674231415/

xAI signed a deal with the GSA to offer Grok to US federal agencies for $0.42 per agency for 18 months, a discount to OpenAI's $1 per year for ChatGPT (Oma Seddiq/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-25…

This is some serious hardware.
And the best name of a Secret Service agent: Matt McCool
"Secret Service takes down network that could’ve crippled New York cell service"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/secret-service-new-y…

The US CFTC staff describe chaos, cutbacks, and an atmosphere of resentment and paranoia as the agency prepares to take on new crypto regulatory duties (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-08-21/as-crypto-duti…

https://www.wired.com/story/sim-farm-new-york-threatened-us-infrastructure-feds-say/
“Despite speculation in some reporting about SIM farm operation that suggests it was created by a foreign state such as Russia or China and used for espionage…

‘SIM Farms’ Are a Spam Plague. A Giant One in New York Threatened US Infrastructure, Feds Say
The agency says it found a network of some 300 servers and 100,000 SIM cards—enough to knock out cell service in the NYC area. Experts say it mirrors facilities typically used for cybercrime.

Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia withdraws amid text controversy
https://ground.news/article/trump-nominee-paul-ingrassia-withdraws-amid-text-controversy_b0fc0b

Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia withdraws amid text controversy
President Donald Trump’s pick to lead a federal watchdog agency withdrew from consideration Tuesday after his offensive text messages were made public and GOP senators revolted.

Dallas Cowboys might have struck gold with Javonte Williams based on this stat https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/dallas-cowboys-might-have-struck-gold-with-javonte-williams-based-on-stat

Deadly floods inundate Indonesia's Bali and Flores islands #Indonesia

Deadly floods inundate Indonesia's Bali and Flores islands
Flash floods swept two Indonesian islands, including tourist hotspot Bali, killing at least 13 people, with six others missing, the country's disaster agency said on Wednesday.

Trump pick to lead federal watchdog agency withdraws after offensive text messages were revealed (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/trump-special-counsel-ingrassia-texts-d11db9dc83767040f56a16766a3c240b
http://www.memeorandum.com/251021/p150#a251021p150

Too many inconvenient truths coming from that.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/08/nasas-acting-chie…

NASA’s acting chief calls for the end of Earth science at the space agency
NASA’s charter clearly states the agency should study planet Earth, however.

FPF Releases Issue Brief on New CCPA Regulations for Automated Decisionmaking Technology, Risk Assessments, and Cybersecurity Audits
https://fpf.org/blog/fpf-releases-issue-brief-on-new-cc…

Apple may turn off App Tracking Transparency in Europe due to "intense lobbying efforts" in Germany and other countries over alleged anticompetitive conduct (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac)
https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/23/apple-d

Apple threatens to turn off App Tracking Transparency in Europe - 9to5Mac
In a statement to the German Press Agency, Apple claimed that it may have to turn off App Tracking Transparency...

Ukraine’s anti-corruption chief on how his agency became a target — and what’s next: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/22/ukraines-anticorruption-chief-on-how.html

UK authorities announce arrest in cyberattack that disrupted European airports https://therecord.media/uk-arrest-cyberattack-disruption-european-airports

2025 NFL Free Agency Tracker: Dolphins Add Pass Rush Help, Sign Matthew Judon https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/2025-nfl-free-agency-tracker-signings-updates-best-players-available

An alliance of media and digital organizations file a complaint with Germany's Federal Network Agency against Google's AI Overviews for violating the DSA (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/german-media-groups-…

German media groups file complaint against Google AI Overviews
An alliance of media and digital organisations have filed a complaint with Germany's Federal Network Agency against Google's AI Overviews.

Consumer Autonomy or Illusion? Rethinking Consumer Agency in the Age of Algorithms
Pegah Nokhiz, Aravinda Kanchana Ruwanpathirana
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13440 https://

Consumer Autonomy or Illusion? Rethinking Consumer Agency in the Age of Algorithms
Consumer agency in the digital age is increasingly constrained by systemic barriers and algorithmic manipulation, raising concerns about the authenticity of consumption choices. Nowadays, financial decisions are shaped by external pressures like obligatory consumption, algorithmic persuasion, and unstable work schedules that erode financial autonomy. Obligatory consumption (like hidden fees) is intensified by digital ecosystems. Algorithmic tactics like personalized recommendations lead to impu…

Where Do I 'Add the Egg'?: Exploring Agency and Ownership in AI Creative Co-Writing Systems
Dashiel Carrera, Jeb Thomas-Mitchell, Daniel Wigdor
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15440

Where Do I 'Add the Egg'?: Exploring Agency and Ownership in AI Creative Co-Writing Systems
AI co-writing systems challenge long held ideals about agency and ownership in the creative process, thereby hindering widespread adoption. In order to address this, we investigate conceptions of agency and ownership in AI creative co-writing. Drawing on insights from a review of commercial systems, we developed three co-writing systems with identical functionality but distinct interface metaphors: agentic, tool-like, and magical. Through interviews with professional and non-professional writer…

#GSA calls back hundreds of #workers after disastrous #DOGE cuts to US Gov General Services Admin left key agency "broken"
According to an internal #memo

White House rehires hundreds of employees terminated by DOGE
Hundreds of laid-off federal employees who managed government workspaces are being called back to their jobs as the Trump administration walks back plans to slash its real estate portfolio. The administration has given employees until the end of this week to accept or decline reinstatement, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press. Those who accept must report to work on Oct. 6 after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation. Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, the top Democrat on the s…

“The Destruction of NASA’s Mission” | Whistleblowers Reveal OMB’s Unconstitutional Plot to Gut the Agency: #NASA Since Early Summer—Threatening Safety, Mission, Science: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/9/new-democratic-staff-report-direct-evidence-trump-administration-has-been-illegally-imposing-president-s-proposed-budget-cuts-at-nasa-since-early-summer-threatening-safety-mission-science -> https://bsky.app/profile/commerce.senate.gov/post/3lzyge7sr422e and https://bsky.app/profile/solarshea.bsky.social/post/3m2mxii7lkc2o

“What is political agency?” is an interesting text about how to approach political activism that has impact. I also learned something about garlic preserved with honey. https://write.as/conjure-utopia/what-is-political-agency

What is political agency?
What is political agency? Agency is the faith that your actions will have an impact on the world. Ideally, the impact you want to have. T...

Moody Urbanity - Manmade Confinements 🏗️
情绪化城市 - 人造禁锢 🏗️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Kentmere Pan 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Ah, time to modify agency service offerings to replace "accessibility" with "AI-ready" (and increase the price).
https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/115413652248811652

Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
Attached: 1 image It's neat to see them encourage developers to add ARIA tags to pages though, an "agent" can be thought of as effectively another form of assistive technology

England’s commercial datacentres are using far less water than many assume, according to a new report published by industry group techUK in collaboration with the Environment Agency.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/england-s-da…

England’s datacentres use minimal water in cooling operations, techUK
England’s commercial datacentres are using far less water than many assume, according to a new report published by industry group techUK in collaboration with the ...

Ransomware gang known for government attacks claims Maryland transit incident https://therecord.media/maryland-transit-administration-data-breach-claimed-ransomware-gang

Replaced article(s) found for cs.CE. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CE/new
[1/1]:
- From Autonomy to Agency: Agentic Vehicles for Human-Centered Mobility Systems
Jiangbo Yu

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/climate/epa-emissions-data-collection-halt.html
This will coincide with claims that the environment is improving.
But at least there will be an opportunity for public comments. To be ignored.
Those p…

#Salesforce Tries to Help ICE Boost Its Immigration Force
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/us/salesforce-benioff-ice.html

Fair Play in the Newsroom: Actor-Based Filtering Gender Discrimination in Text Corpora
Stefanie Urchs, Veronika Thurner, Matthias A{\ss}enmacher, Christian Heumann, Stephanie Thiemichen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13169

Fair Play in the Newsroom: Actor-Based Filtering Gender Discrimination in Text Corpora
Large language models are increasingly shaping digital communication, yet their outputs often reflect structural gender imbalances that originate from their training data. This paper presents an extended actor-level pipeline for detecting and mitigating gender discrimination in large-scale text corpora. Building on prior work in discourse-aware fairness analysis, we introduce new actor-level metrics that capture asymmetries in sentiment, syntactic agency, and quotation styles. The pipeline supp…

um
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog

Multi-Robot Navigation in Social Mini-Games: Definitions, Taxonomy, and Algorithms
Rohan Chandra, Shubham Singh, Abhishek Jha, Dannon Andrade, Hriday Sainathuni, Katia Sycara
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13459

Multi-Robot Navigation in Social Mini-Games: Definitions, Taxonomy, and Algorithms
The ``Last Mile Challenge'' has long been considered an important, yet unsolved, challenge for autonomous vehicles, public service robots, and delivery robots. A central issue in this challenge is the ability of robots to navigate constrained and cluttered environments (e.g., doorways, hallways, corridor intersections), often while competing for space with other robots and humans. We refer to these environments as ``Social Mini-Games'' (SMGs). SMGs are tightly coupled, high-agency interactions …

Day 10: Stacey Mason
Another academic, but this time one of my compatriots; we overlapped at UC Santa Cruz as advisees of Michael Mates, and even collaborated on a Twitch stream called ScholarsPlay for a bit, although we never coauthored any papers. We did chat about our research, and I had many good discussions with her about agency in interactive fiction, a topic we both published on. Her paper "On Games and Links: Extending the Vocabulary of Agency and Immersion in Interactive Narratives" (#20AuthorsNoMen

Reliability, Embeddedness, and Agency: A Utility-Driven Mathematical Framework for Agent-Centric AI Adoption
Faruk Alpay, Taylan Alpay
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12896 https://

Reliability, Embeddedness, and Agency: A Utility-Driven Mathematical Framework for Agent-Centric AI Adoption
We formalize three design axioms for sustained adoption of agent-centric AI systems executing multi-step tasks: (A1) Reliability > Novelty; (A2) Embed > Destination; (A3) Agency > Chat. We model adoption as a sum of a decaying novelty term and a growing utility term and derive the phase conditions for troughs/overshoots with full proofs. We introduce: (i) an identifiability/confounding analysis for $(α,β,N_0,U_{\max})$ with delta-method gradients; (ii) a non-monotone comparator (logistic-with…

AnchoredAI: Contextual Anchoring of AI Comments Improves Writer Agency and Ownership
Martin Lou, Jackie Crowley, Samuel Dodson, Dongwook Yoon
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16128 ht…

AnchoredAI: Contextual Anchoring of AI Comments Improves Writer Agency and Ownership
Generative AI is increasingly integrated into writing support, yet current chat-based interfaces often obscure referential context and risk amplifying automation bias and overreliance. We introduce AnchoredAI, a novel system that anchors AI feedback directly to relevant text spans. AnchoredAI implements two key mechanisms: (1) an Anchoring Context Window (ACW) that maintains unique, context-rich references, and (2) an update-aware context retrieval method that preserves the intent of prior comm…

3 Cowboys veterans in danger of release as cutdown day approaches https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/08/21/cowboys-roster-veterans-risk-collns-sanders-thomas/85718305007/

A top IRS official, Holly Paz, sues the agency, claiming officials unlawfully leaked her employment data to news outlets, including Fox News (Jesse Drucker/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/business/irs-lawsuit-holly-paz-fox-news.html…

IRS Official Sues Agency, Accusing It of Leaking Private Data to Fox News and Others
Holly Paz was among officials scrutinizing tax shelters before she was placed on leave and Fox News reported she had been fired.

The EU's cybersecurity agency says a ransomware attack caused the recent disruptions that affected check-in systems at Heathrow and other European airports (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace…

Shrapnel fell onto CHP vehicle during U.S. military live-fire exercise over I-5, agency says (Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-10-19/u-s-military-live-fire-demonstration-dropped-shrapnel-on-chp-vehicle
http://www.memeorandum.com/251019/p68#a251019p68

FEMA staff rally outside agency headquarters
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2025/10/fema-staff-rally-outside-agency-headquarters/

Acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy
emphasized his desire to end NASA's focus on studying the Earth and understanding how the planet's surface and atmosphere are changing.
This shift has been a priority of the Trump Administration at other federal agencies.
https://…

NASA’s acting chief calls for the end of Earth science at the space agency
NASA’s charter clearly states the agency should study planet Earth, however.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/14/cyber-attacks-rise-in-past-year-uk-security-agency-says
Cyber-attacks rise by 50% in past year, UK security agency says

NASA’s Management of the #Dragonfly Project: https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-inspector-general-oig/audit-reports/nasas-management-of-the-dragonfly-project/ -> After early struggles, NASA’s ambitious mission to Titan is “on track” for launch: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/09/after-early-struggles-nasas-ambitious-mission-to-titan-is-on-track-for-launch/ -> "A new independent report finds that although NASA's ambitious mission to fly across the surface of Titan is delayed and over budget, the fault is due to the space agency's management rather than the program itself."

Russia building its alternative to Starlink, space agency head says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/19/russia-building-its-alternative-to.html

"Crackdown on 'forever chemicals' expands ahead of EU rules overhaul"
#EU #EuropeanUnion #PFAS #ForeverChemicals

Crackdown on 'forever chemicals' expands ahead of EU rules overhaul
As the EU prepares a broader reform of its chemical legislation, the European Chemicals Agency has updated its proposal to restrict “forever chemicals,” adding new sectors to the scope of its planned ban.

Canada's financial crime watchdog fines crypto exchange Cryptomus a record ~$126M for infractions including failing to flag suspicious transactions (Canadian Press)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cryptomus-fined-177-million-fintrac-9.6948338

Crypto exchange Cryptomus fined record $177M by Canada's financial crime watchdog | CBC News
A cryptocurrency exchange has been slapped with a fine of almost $177 million — the largest-ever penalty by Canada's financial intelligence agency — for infractions including failing to flag more than 1,000 transactions with suspected links to criminal activity.

World breaks renewable records - adding 582 GW of capacity in 2024 - but must move faster to hit the agreed 2030 tripling goal.
From @irena-official.bsky.social:
https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2

World Breaks Renewable Records but Must Move Faster to Hit 2030 Tripling Goal
The world is falling behind on its renewable energy and efficiency goals despite record progress last year, confirms a new report released today by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the COP30 Brazilian Presidency, and the Global Renewables Alliance (GRA) during a pre-COP30 high-level event in Brasília.

2025 NFL Free Agency Tracker: James Cook, Bills Agree to Extension, Hold-In Over https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/2025-nfl-free-agency-tracker-signings-updates-best-players-available

Trump administration furloughs nuclear weapons agency staff due to shutdown | Nuclear Weapons News | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/18/trump-administration-furloughs-nuclear-weapons-agency-staff-due-to-shutdown

Cowboys’ George Pickens Makes Statement on Re-Signing in Free Agency https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/george-pickens-staying-free-agency/?adt_ei=[email]

https://nypost.com/2025/10/10/us-news/cybersecurity-agency-that-clashed-with-trump-one-of-the-first-hit-with-federal-firings-due-to-shutdown/
Cybersecurity agency that clashed with Trump…

Cybersecurity agency that clashed with Trump one of the first hit with federal firings due to government shutdown
CISA plans to keep just 889 employees on duty during a shutdown while furloughing 65% of its workforce.

The Impact of Automation on Risk-Taking: The Role of Sense of Agency
Yang Chen, Zhijun Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12794 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.12…

The Impact of Automation on Risk-Taking: The Role of Sense of Agency
Automation significantly alters human behavior, particularly risk-taking. Previous researches have paid limited attention to the underlying characteristics of automation and their mechanisms of influence on risk-taking. This study investigated how automation affects risk-taking and examined the role of sense of agency therein. By quantifying sense of agency through subjective ratings, this research explored the impact of automation level and reliability level on risk-taking. The results of thre…

Google will provide Gemini for Government to US federal agencies at $0.47 per agency through 2026; OpenAI and Anthropic are offering their products for $1/year (Julia Shapero/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5463428-google-ai-cloud-services-fede…

CISA warns of Apple zero-day used in targeted cyberattacks https://therecord.media/cisa-warns-of-apple-zero-day

Media advocates criticize a US Department of Energy plan to throw out FOIA requests sent before October 1, 2024, unless the request is formally renewed (Jason Koebler/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/trump-administration-outlines-p…

Trump Administration Outlines Plan to Throw Out an Agency's FOIA Requests En Masse
The Department of Energy said it will close FOIA requests from last year unless the requester emails the agency to say they are still interested. Experts say it's an "attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible."

U.S. Deputy State Secretary Landau expresses regrets over detention of S. Koreans (Yoo Jee-ho/Yonhap News Agency)
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20250914003100315
http://www.memeorandum.com/250914/p40#a250914p40

"The Post reported Wednesday that “Hegseth’s unusually large personal security requirements are straining the Army agency tasked with protecting him as it pulls agents from criminal investigations to safeguard family residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and D.C., according to numerous officials familiar with the operation.”"
Trump official demands 'severe punishment' for journalists over Washington Post report - Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org/pete-hegseth-2673904738/

Two weeks into the government shutdown
with no resolution in sight,
higher ed associations and researchers say
the inability of scientists to contact federal agency workers
or get new grants approved
is causing harm
https://www.

Researchers, Colleges Face Federal Shutdown Impacts
Two weeks into the government shutdown with no resolution in sight, higher ed associations and researchers say the inability of scientists to contact federal agency workers or get new grants approved is causing harm.

OpenAI says it will work with SAG-AFTRA, CAA, UTA, and others to crack down on Sora 2 deepfakes, following concerns from actor Bryan Cranston and SAG-AFTRA (Jaures Yip/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/20/open-ai-sora-bryan-cranston-sag-aftra.html
…

OpenAI cracks down on Sora 2 deepfakes after pressure from Bryan Cranston, SAG-AFTRA
OpenAI will also collaborate with United Talent Agency, Creative Artists Agency and Association of Talent Agents to ensure voice and likeness protections.

"Regulators overlooking toxic Pfas found around Lancashire chemicals plant"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #PFAS #ForeverChemicals

https://www.cablefax.com/regulation/on-hold-court-pauses-fcc-data-breach-rules-as-agency-takes-new-look
Court Pauses FCC Data Breach Rules as Agency Takes New Look

Court Pauses FCC Data Breach Rules as Agency Takes New Look
The FCC is going to take another look at those data breach rules, and it sounds like they may be toast.

Q&A with Amy Lanzi, CEO of marketing and ad agency Digitas, on digital marketing, AI's impact on advertising, the creator economy, and more (Hank Green/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-w

How brands and creators are fighting for your attention — and your money
Guest host Hank Green sits down with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi to demystify digital marketing and explain why the fight for your attention has grown so fierce.

"Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to investigate climate and weather control, and is expected to create a task force that will recommend possible federal action, according to a former agency official, an internal agency memo obtained by KFF Health News, and a consultant who helped with the memo."
Leaked memo shows bizarre weather conspiracy theory being taken seriously by government - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/weather-2674206192/

The Adaptation Paradox: Agency vs. Mimicry in Companion Chatbots
T. James Brandt, Cecilia Xi Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12525 https://arxiv.org/pdf/25…

The Adaptation Paradox: Agency vs. Mimicry in Companion Chatbots
Generative AI powers a growing wave of companion chatbots, yet principles for fostering genuine connection remain unsettled. We test two routes: visible user authorship versus covert language-style mimicry. In a preregistered 3x2 experiment (N = 162), we manipulated user-controlled avatar generation (none, premade, user-generated) and Language Style Matching (LSM) (static vs. adaptive). Generating an avatar boosted rapport ($ω^2$ = .040, p = .013), whereas adaptive LSM underperformed static st…

Israeli intelligence agency balked at Netanyahu's strike in Qatar (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/09/12/mossad-israel-qatar-strike-hamas/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250912/p102#a250912p102

OK, now, do we believe this?
CISA work not ‘degraded’ by Trump administration cuts, top agency official says
https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-operational-strength-despite-cuts-nicholas-andersen-billington-cybersecurity-summit/

Russia pressures Apple to make Russian search engines default on locally-sold iPhones https://therecord.media/russia-apple-search-engine-default

There are parts of the building that have not been fixed. We have closed bathrooms all over the place. The front door doesn’t work, it’s been broken for two months, but we have money for a stupid banner”
'Like working in a prison': Employees at this agency reveal how Trump is 'gutting' it - Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org/federal-agency-trump-prison/

China says the NSA has been hacking its National Time Service Center, which provides high precision time services for the government and others, since 2023 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-19/china-…

Trump slashes mental health agency as shutdown drags on (NPR)
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/11/nx-s1-5571948/trump-mental-health-substance-abuse-cdc-layoffs-jobs
http://www.memeorandum.com/251011/p71#a251011p71

MI6 launched Silent Courier, an online portal hosted on the dark web designed to let potential spies from Russia and elsewhere communicate with UK intelligence (Alex Wickham/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

Trump nominates Bureau of Labor Statistics critic to replace fired agency head (Lauren Kaori Gurley/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/11/trump-bls-nomination-antoni/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250811/p117#a250811p117

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/house-of-commons-data-breach-1.7608061
House of Commons hit by cyberattack from 'threat actor': internal email

House of Commons hit by cyberattack from 'threat actor': internal email | CBC News
The House of Commons and Canada’s cybersecurity agency are investigating a significant data breach caused by an unknown “threat actor” targeting employee information.

'The neutrality of the agency has been eliminated': Stats-based feds decry BLS chief's firing (Eric Katz/GovExec.com)
https://www.govexec.com/management/2025/08/neutrality-agency-has-been-eliminated-stats-based-feds-decry-bls-chiefs-firing/407272/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250806/p137#a250806p137

Internal documents: Salesforce pitched ICE on using its AI tech to nearly triple the agency's staff by hiring 10K new officers, improve investigations, and more (Heather Knight/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/us/sale

Salesforce Offers Its Services to Boost ICE Immigration Force
The San Francisco-based firm has told ICE that it could use A.I. to help the agency nearly triple its staff. The company’s C.E.O., once a progressive tech titan, has embraced President Trump.

Postal traffic to US drops more than 80% after trade exemption rule ends, UN agency says (Chandelis Duster/NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/07/nx-s1-5533121/postal-traffic-to-us-drops-more-than-80-after-trade-exemption-rule-ends-un-agency-says
http://www.memeorandum.com/250907/p62#a250907p62

Staffing Crisis Unfolds at BLS With a Third of Leadership Jobs Now Vacant (Molly Smith/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-09/third-of-bls-leadership-jobs-sit-empty-at-us-economic-statistics-agency
http://www.memeorandum.com/250909/p16#a250909p16

Q&A with Amy Lanzi, CEO of marketing and ad agency Digitas, on digital marketing, AI's impact on advertising, the creator economy, and more (Hank Green/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-w

How brands and creators are fighting for your attention — and your money
Guest host Hank Green sits down with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi to demystify digital marketing and explain why the fight for your attention has grown so fierce.

AG Pam Bondi says Meta complied with the DOJ's request to take down a Facebook Page that the agency said was being used to harass ICE agents in Chicago (James Oliphant/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/facebook-